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Digital Art

In this unit students will be introduced to the basics of digital design, and understand that digital art is a major part of technology products. From apps and games to websites, art is everywhere in tech. Students will learn basic text, shape and drawing tools in several digital art applications, and use them to create products. The apps recommended here are:

  • Google Drawings - Part of our Google apps suite and great for diagrams and for adding pictures and shapes to Google docs. 
  • Sketchpad - A robust art app with a large variety of drawing, shape and text tools. Sketchpad also comes with a large library of clipart (stamps), and can export in several file formats.
  • Piskel - For creating pixel art, and for creating animated .gif files or sprite sheets (images for video games).

Note: The apps selected on this page are a small sample of what is available. There are many free, powerful digital art apps and more are being released all the time. The above apps were chosen because they are not only robust, but they have been vetted for use by our district's tech department. It is very important that apps we use with kids are secure, and that they do not collect or use student data in violation of state law. If you know of a web-based app that you want to use with students, make sure that it meets the standards for protecting students' data privacy. Please check with Tim Pappendorf (our head of Tech), and Katie Dorr (our district's technology integration specialist).


Standards

6. Creative Communicator - Students communicate clearly and express themselves creatively for a variety of purposes using the platforms, tools, styles, formats and digital media appropriate to their goals.


Objectives

Students will understand basic design principles, and will demonstrate those principles by creating several products. These products should demonstrate the students' ability to:

  • Use a variety of tools to create lines
  • Create a variety of shapes, and format those shapes
  • Create and format text in a variety of ways
  • Save and export different types of files for different purposes
  • Understand rules and laws around copyright

Vocabulary

The slideshow below is also in a shared drive and contains two separate vocabulary lessons. For each lesson, students will write a sentence for each vocabulary term in a Pear Deck. Each sentence must:

  • Be a complete sentence
  • Use the vocabulary term
  • Make sense in the digital art context
Example: My logo does not violate copyright laws.
Non-Example: My pet penguin's name is copyright.


Resources

The buttons below link to different apps for teaching digital art. There are links to the apps themselves, and to videos and pages that have tips for using the apps.

The button links to the pixel art app Piskel. Here are some links to other resources:
  • shows the drawing tools in Piskel. 
  • shows the basic animation tools in Piskel.
  • shows how to import files into, and export files out of Piskel.
Students will open Google Drawings from their Google Drive.
  • is a fairly comprehensive tutorial for Google Drawings.
  • has videos about the tools in Google drawings and has some project ideas.
  • has a shapes reflection assignment demonstrated.
The button on the left links to Sketchpad, a free online digital art app. Some of the links below are LaVenture-created videos. 
  • shows the basic tools in Sketchpad.  
  • shows how to size the canvas and export files in Sketchpad.
This link takes you to a unit plan created in Education Copilot. You need to be signed in to a account to see these resources.
 

Lesson resources for 6th grade technology class at LaVenture Middle School, 2023